The idea of placing the emphasis of a modern artistic body culture on movement choirs, which communicate the joy of the dance experience through various performances and festivals, seems to me the right path to put these body-cultural yearnings onto solid and healthy soul-mind-body foundations. In this case, the issue is not, or not in the first instance, whether the body’s dance education can or should serve the stage play and the dance performance, but precisely the opposite, the value of the forces which are awakened in the aesthetic body education or dance education through the study and performance of choral movement works.

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There is no other way to completely shake awake the dance sense of the modern human being so that its presence continues into all aspects of life. What can be achieved through simple regular exercising in the name of health and strengthening the body has nothing or very little to do with an artistic body culture. The latter deals with a grasping/feeling for spiritual-emotional tension /frequencies, using the sense of the body, the sense of movement. This sense is being paralysed and almost destroyed by civilisation all around us. Those who can see the frightening lack of this sense of movement [being taught] in our primary and secondary schools, our colleges and universities or even in privately run courses, those who deplore this lack and are convinced that this mistake, the lack of one of the most natural and beneficial forces of the human being, needs to be rectified can find no better remedy than that of choral movement art. All intellectual elaborations – even when accompanied by practical demonstrations – all exercise that uses an overly artistic approach, such as gymnastics to music, expressive gymnastics and so on, will only take us a quarter or half of the way, because it doesn’t achieve the full engagement of the whole person. And it is only through this full engagement that the sickening dam between us and our free sense of movement can be breached. Only those who carry the idea within their actual bodies have the necessary enthusiasm that pulls one into a living understanding of the matter so that it may transform beyond a simple act of becoming-conscious to a becoming-part of the subjective individual [Tr. “seines Ichs”, not simply ego, but the whole individual]. Those who play as dancers have a greater chance of becoming part of the dance experience [“Tänzertum”] than those who simply practice the technique of the dancer. But the dance experience is the embodied sense of movement, which is what we are seeking. The world of art signifies more than simple artistry, it is the reaching towards a higher reality.

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One mustn’t confuse the effectiveness of movement choirs with the finished stage play. In movement choirs the dancer’s personality or individuality is not continuously transformed and adjusted according to artistic rules; this work falls to [professional] dance companies [“Tanzbühnen”].

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The dancer in a movement choir not only reveals their own self, but a cleansed and elevated [version of selfhood], extending ever closer to an ideal form [of self]. The dancer brings forth from the depths a newly awakened sense of movement and anchors this sense in a continuous and strong way to their being, through an enthusiastic witnessing of the doing of movement performance. The sluice gates holding back the inner movement have been opened when the soul is swinging [resonating] with the dance piece; it is no longer necessary to teach the soul and try to cram in all kinds [of theoretical knowledge], which is artificially stuck on only to be jettisoned at the first opportune moment.

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It is of course necessary to ensure that the exercises, festivals and movement works of the choirs are appropriate to this objective. It should be noted here that every community of human beings already carries the seeds for so many of those forms of movement, of works of movement, so that it only takes a minor impulse to set them off. What ancient communities of human beings created through rituals and ceremonies arises from a source which even today has not yet completely run dry. Only the occasions differ from those of ancient times. These occasions have changed many times; religious periods of time had their own sense of movement with their own religious “flavour” and political-ceremonial movement structure; today we are living in an age of great cultural change, therefore our own sense of movement expresses itself through cultural-artistic rather than ceremonial or cult-like forms.

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The social form that is prevalent today – and these are mostly social forms, the sense of movement which connects the Self with the environment is not a simple private matter – this form is without doubt the one of movement composition, similar to the symphonic sound artwork. Just as we no longer confine our singing to services of worship or courtly ritual, but instead come together in a free community of secular singing choirs in order to enjoy the blessings the joy of music can bring, we now want to share in the life-affirming power of the joy of dance through the exercises, celebrations and performances accessible through movement choirs. As a wholly natural form, as a self-evident demand of the human community of our time the movement choir and the choral dance composition emerge out of the darkness in answer to our own yearning.

The strong, lightning-like illumination of the movement impulse, which we feel in a state of elation, is without doubt the essential core of the life-affirming function of dance. And it is a more complete elation than what accompanies simple enthusiasm or mere cerebral becoming-conscious.

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This elation experienced through dance carries both the elements of depth and clarity simultaneously, and in addition adds a third element, that of the power of the act of movement, the living ethos. Anyone who has ever, with emotion, taken a deep breath and spread out both arms – be that even in early childhood towards their mother – will recognise this power. In choral performance this act of spreading both arms may not be directed towards a concrete object (such as reaching towards a loved one), but then these are rare and special moments in life where we exclaim with joy at an object or a person!

In Dance – particularly in choral dance – it is the elation in itself – or the original source of elation? – which we resonate with and swing towards, feeling deeply and understanding clearly.

Words cannot convey this process as vividly as Dance. In any case, thinking through these statements is enough to recognize that the urge to choral dance composition can lead us beyond simplified arguments of mere usefulness of a gymnastic physical education to the pursuit of those human values that we are ultimately striving for. It is these human values that are the real, or even the sole objective of all body-cultural longings of our time.

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The creation of movement choirs is therefore not one of many ways forward for the modern artistic body culture, but the only possible path. This applies to adults and children alike, as well as to schools, where experience has shown that it is the only way, perhaps the even more simplified method of dance acting and mime need to be pursued in order to reawaken the sense of movement which has already started to vanish in children. All theoretical structure of artistic gymnastics, all choreography and related scientific knowledge, even when physically performed, needs the inspired and inspiring spark of the will to perform, or it remains pure theory, limited to be a subject for study, by students, directors and researchers. A human being who is searching for this sense of movement within themselves cannot be placated with these things – as we have learnt from experience, that would be an error.

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Of course, those who wish nothing further than the physical strengthening and health [of the body] can stick to exercising and sports. But let them be undisturbed with pseudo-artistic additions of expressive exercises, with rhythmic or musically melodic influences and any other aestheticizing nonsense, which only leads to sentimentality and doesn’t nurture the sense of movement, and instead distracts from the simple, honest and egocentric objectives of sport and of muscle–strengthening exercises.

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The clear distinction between the two fields of simple body-strengthening on the one hand and the body-strengthening as part of a holistic strengthening of the power of the gesture of the sense of movement on the other hand allows us to clearly recognize the real meaning of an artistic body culture and of the path through the education via movement choirs that lead us to it.

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It must be emphasised that an overall physical training – in the sense of strengthening, normalising and improving overall health – is of course inevitable in the performing of choral movement art. This form of physical training [i.e. movement choirs] however contains both these elements, apart from the hygienic-orthopaedic and sporty super achievements. But these exceptional super achievements are really of little value for the general public, they are, in a sense, a private matter in which wider cultural effects are only of limited scope.

In this way there are clear benefits for the wider general public to be gained from movement choirs, which should be the focus point, even in the field of actual physical education.

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The organisation of movement choirs also has social and economic implications. Through ticket sales at performances and festivals it is possible to keep membership fees at a minimum, which allows the benefits of a movement culture to be made accessible to a wider circle. Similar attempts of coordination of general physical education and public performance are being undertaken now, and such an organisation can and should be the social and economic objective of movement choirs!

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From a cultural-historical point of view we are in an era in which the artistic dance performed by lay people is overtaking the earlier folks and societal dance, or perhaps both types of dance will continue alongside each other, such as commonly practised artistic music and folk music.

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The aim of movement choirs is to become a staging post in this development. The objective is therefore not only to simply the production of choral dance compositions, as this would lead to a one-sided flattening. The objective can be extended to the nurturing and clarifying of the entire art of dance movement and includes the training of first dancers and leaders of movement choirs, even gymnastics teachers who want to specialise in the art of physical education, and also the education of professional dancers. Above all, the fundamental objective must never be forgotten or drowned out: to serve the ennobling of humanity with these performances.

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This then represents the core mission of movement choirs: to keep alive another human sense, a fundamental sense of the actual becoming-human process and to enable it to radiate out more and more.